ARGO: Easily the best movie out of the nine nominated. A great thriller from start to finish as Ben Affleck makes directing look easy.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD: It has some good character moments and it's probably a good piece of art, but ultimately it is a movie and thus it is supposed to be entertaining. It is not. I don't recommend it.

DJANGO UNCHAINED: A Tarantino film without the classic Tarantino charm and wit to it. Pretty underwhelming all things considering. His 4th best film behind Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, and Reservoir Dogs.

LES MISERABLES: I don't like or enjoy musicals so I avoided this film like the plague.

LINCOLN: Lincoln is not only the single most overrated film of 2012 but I say this without hyperbole that it is in contention for the most overrated film of all time. The greatness in there but it did not shine through.

LIFE OF PI: The film is gorgeous to look at as Ang Lee directs the hell out of this film. The story is captivating and memorable and the images are spectacular.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK: I love Silver Linings Playbook. It has a lot of what I love about films. It is character driven first and foremost but the characters are interesting enough and interact with each other in such an enjoyable way that my interest was still captivated throughout the film.

ZERO DARK THIRTY: When I went to see Zero Dark Thirty I had heard it was easily the best film of the year and every other film was second fiddle to it. In the end, it's pretty good but nothing spectacular and I don't know how good it would have been without the third act and the eventual UBL raid. I recommend seeing Argo, Homeland or The Hurt Locker instead.

I think the Best Picture winner will come down to either Argo or Lincoln. Click here to see the pros and cons of each movie and my logic for why I think Argo will come out victorious

FINAL THOUGHTS2012 was an extremely deep year for films. While I struggled to even come up with a Top 5 or Top 10 list in 2011, I easily created a Top 25 for 2012 list- and I probably could have extended it to 30. There was a crap ton of 3+ star movies in the past year. However, that being said, there really were no elite films. What I mean by that is that there really was no movie that stood out and would be in the running as the Best Movie Of The Year in any other given year. As weak as 2011 was, it still had Drive which could compete in any given year for the Best Film. 2010 has both Inception and The Social Network. The best year for elite films was in 1994 which produced The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, AND Forrest Gump. All three films could compete with the best of them OR be the very best film in almost every other year.

Elite films are hands down four star films and in 2012, I only gave two films four stars: Looper (which was my #1 of the year) and Wreck-It Ralph (my obvious number two film of the year). I liked Looper a lot and while I think it was the hands down the best film of the year, I don't think it could compete with many other elite films, especially the other 6 I previously mentioned.

However, what made 2012 great was that it had 15 films that I rated 3.5 stars. (While this is my own personal ranking, this further reinforces the general consensus of how deep 2012 was). I barely came up with a top 10 list last year and this year I have FIFTEEN films that I thought were near perfect. Besides 7 of the 9 films I mentioned that should have been nominated for Best Motion Picture, the other 3.5 stars from 2012 according to me were: Seven Psychopaths, The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, The Cabin in the Woods, Skyfall, Django Unchained, Sleepwalk With Me, and Celeste and Jesse Forever.